So Some Music Happened

more like MADE OF AWESOME

Kate Nash, "We Get On" - It figures; I go and write up a big, relatively-personally-authoritative explication of my favorite stuff from the world o' music this year, and then I go and trip ass backwards over a record which may or may not obliterate the whole thing before it's even off the front page. That's not to say that Kate Nash's Made of Bricks is a sure-fire lock-the-doors end-of-year up-fucker, of course; it is, however, the first album to which the enthusiasm of my response can be characterized as anything other than "clinical" since Sound of Silver suddenly appeared in my iTunes like a bolt out of the blue, and that counts for something. Mind, it does count for less than my overly-excitable prose stylings might lead you to believe; the reason this post is coming like a week late is largely due to half of my brain screaming at the other half to shut up and that we weren't going to be posting about anything until we had relaxed into a calmer, more meditative state and that if we didn't settle down now Dad would turn the car around and then there would be no Six Flags for anyone and it would be ALL MY FAULT. But it certainly counts for enough to have me attacking my lists with a machete; this album is awfully fucking good, and if it's OK by you I do believe I'd like to start talking about it now.

Shockingly (or at least to long-time readers), the ardor I maintain for this album is only marginally motivated by Paul Epworth's production job. That's not to say that Epworth spends Made of Bricks' running time mentally spending his paycheck; Made of Bricks simply isn't his show, arguably in a way which might prove somewhat galling to Epworth loyalists accustomed to the idea of the famed boardsman setting the tone for the record. Here, however, his role seems to be almost one hundred percent functional in nature - it's his job to get the most out of Nash's sonic textures, to smooth out the rough edges around her songs, to basically strip as much of the imposing indie-ness of the Chirpy British Female Singer/Songwriter idiom in which Made of Bricks exists as he possibly can. And it should likewise be pointed out that he does an admirable job in this capacity - Made of Bricks is nothing if not uniformly palatable, way moreso than Pieces of the People We Love (the closest album-length example in which Epworth effectively subsumed his agenda-setting tendencies to keep from distracting from the band's, y'know, music).

Of course, this simply makes Epworth the Peter Asher to Nash's Linda Ronstadt; clearly, this album is made or broken on the audience's ability to process Nash's virtues as a singer/songwriter, and luckily she spends more or less the whole of Made of Bricks making it as simple as possible to do so. I know I lean on this crutch like crazy, but it really is Nash's gift for arrangements in particular which shines through in the grandest fashion; "Foundations", the big #2 smash hit from Made of Bricks about a couple fighting, is relatively straightforward instrumentally and compositionally (not to mention subject-matter-wise), but the sheer effectiveness of Nash's subtle choices to do things like double up on her piano part when things get heated during the second verse or only allowing any flourishes to creep into her playing when her narrator gains some distance from the heat of the moment is more or less a matter of fact - I mean, in terms of a song working, "Foundations" practically cries out to have its distinction fingered.

One could also praise Made of Bricks in an equally fulsome manner simply by restricting one's attention to the lyrics - and for essentially the same reasons, no less. Again, it's not that they're depicting anything revolutionary per se; Made of Bricks is, after all, an album about boyfriends and modern life and basically all the stuff which isn't any more interesting on its own merits when it's showing up on a Lily Allen album. But it's the micro-adornments which give the songs on Made of Bricks their emotive textures - the little details Nash recalls, or the irrepressible character of her wry sense of humor (one ballad rather pointedly punctures its inherent poignancy through self-conscious repetition of the phrase, and I quote, "What ya bein' a dickhead for?"), or even the subtlety of her diction. I'd imagine that word choice was more of a consideration for Nash than the effortless pop constructs which pepper her album might indicate; keep in mind that she's competing against a whole host of Pipettes and Lily Allens and other girls who drop their haitches and say "yeeeeah" in a condescending tone of voice and such. Lord knows it's a suspicion Nash goes out of her way to cultivate; on first listen, Made of Bricks might sound as brassy and cheeky as Alright Still, but closer inspection of the lyrics reveal Nash's nigh-masochistic drive to catalogue - of her own caustic (not underscore NOT charming) behavior, of its motivations, and of its consequences.

But if any element of Made of Bricks can be said to define it, it's probably as simple as the overall performance, as best summed up by "We Get On", a song which combines Nash's musical quaintness with her innate knack for lyrical propriety and then absolutely renders each of them all but inconsequential in the face of the way she delivers them. There are moments of more artful subtlety on Made of Bricks than the one in "We Get On" where the piano crumbles as the narrator sees her object of dreamy abandon making out with some random tramp, just like how there are probably just as many examples of lyrical dexterity as revealing as the one coming when Nash's friends console her with reasons why she shouldn't be so broken up about the sad turn of events. But placing two events with such potential for sturm und drang in such close proximity to each other carries with it a commitment to a pretty dizzying performance, and that's exactly where Nash grabs a hammer and outright nails it; in the space of like thirty seconds, the emotional climate in which Nash's narrator exists goes from one of violent loss to one of spitting hostility to, at last, an honest one of shell-shocked misery. The best part is that you can get every speck of that simply by listening to Nash's delivery - it would of course be more respectful of the artist to sit there and pore through her rather amazing choices in revelatory details (seriously, that narrator's nameless friends are exsquisitely sketched in both their pettiness and their ineffectiveness), but the sheer valence of her tone of voice really ought to be enough to clue you into the fact that the girl at the center of this story just got hurt - bad. And the really crazy thing is that that little passage represents - at most - like, a fifth of all of the raw emotional data Nash offers up for her listeners to parse; I could have just as easily written this whole paragraph about the offhanded way in which she describes how and why she doesn't sit around imagining little romantic scenarios , or that bit where she finds herself momentarily racked with self-loathing after a plan to bump into her adored goes horribly (and literally) wrong. Or or or or or. Made of Bricks certainly spoils you with choices.

But is that enough to earn it the status of best album of the year? The copout answer is, of course, that I don't know; we've still got four months in which Delia & Gavin might show up out of nowhere with a copy of the mythical Black Leotard Front album in hand, and I am known for nothing if not my proclivity against gesturing emptily. I do admit that everything I love about Made of Bricks is wildly personal in nature, and that the instant Nash's music relinquishes its death-grip on my auditory perceptive organs my ardor may decrease substantially, and that the other instant when I come to terms with the vapidity of all the talking points about this album which I haven't brought up yet (what, didja think I wouldn't be interested in hearing how Paul Epworth goes about defining his second pop idiom inside of four years?) said ardor is likely to vanish completely. I accept all of these things and more. All that matters right now is that (a) Made of Bricks is awesome and (b) I can't stop listening to it, and, as mentioned way up top, that really does count for more than you might think. (Click here to buy Made of Bricks from Amazon.co.uk)

The Shocking Pinks, "I Want U Back" - One of these days, I do in fact aim to write a record review which doesn't hinge on like five or six major factual fallacies; if I'm lucky, it might even appear in print, so I can point to one example of my non-dumbassitude which even faulty server upkeep can't take away from me. I can tell you that the review I wrote of the Shocking Pinks' self-titled compilation of early works forthcoming on DFA sure hinged on a big one, namely that the Pinks actually re-recorded the tracks with their new disco overloards when, in actuality, the DFA's role in crafting the Pinks' sound extended no further than simple mastering duties (although their end product is like twice as loud as the originals, so clearly they did SOMEthing). Luckily, the DFA's participation was in no way the thrust of my argument for why people should check Shocking Pinks out; the closest I came was in asserting that people with an interest in the evolving DFA aesthetic really do owe it to themselves to check this record out, because it's quite a stylistic depature for the label seemingly as a whole, and that's a fact that remains true no matter how much of a hand Those Crazy Kids had in the actual sonic architecture on display throughout the album. I mean, parts of Shocking Pinks sounds downright radio-ready, and not simply due to contrast; its best songs are holistic pleasures, effortless in form and function - not more-or-less effective distillations of the grandeur easily attainable in other songs on the record (yes, I am That Guy for whom "Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" did very little in the long-run). But don't be fooled: Shocking Pinks is every bit as exploratory a work as the DFA have ever put out - it's just that the musical aspect it explores most effectively (the three-minute balls-out guitar-driven radio single) runs so counterintuitive to the DFA's seemingly-immutable gravitation towards expanse rather than economy that it kinda leaves you scratching your head at first. Granted, it's somewhat less clear on "I Want U Back" than on other singles on Shocking Pinks (especially "Emily", a veritable orgy of New Order-y pleasures - apparently, it's set to be the Pinks' next single, and with GOOD MEASURE), but "I Want U Back" is the one cleared by the label for distribution, so it's what you get. Besides, all the efforts devoted to structuring still shine through despite all the layers of noise; this is, after all, quite possibly the first song in DFA history to feature the "Be My Baby" beat (or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof). And anyway, I'd say there's a greater chance of the best stuff on Shocking Pinks making its way to your ears without my guidance than on any other DFA-released record to date. I mean, with some of these songs, it's really just a matter of time. (Click here to pre-order Shocking Pinks from Amazon)

Pacific!, "Break Your Social System" - And just to bring things full circle, my introduction to the Moshi Moshi Singles Club came courtesy of (Chekhov's gun alert! Chekhov's gun alert!) Kate Nash's "Caroline's A Victim", a song so thoroughly devoid of gratification on the part of the listener as to have even remained more or less untouched during the ongoing Kate Nash renaissance; needless to say, my inclination to inspect Pacific! further had little if anything to do with allegiance to the label. Luckily for me, my lack of commercial radicalism ended up paying off once again; "Break Your Social System" is an outstanding summer single, burnished to the same taut pop shine most commonly encountered in the works of Phoenix (albeit with more of a mannered, gestural rigidity to it - one cannot under any circumstances shortchange the influence of Krautrock on Pacific!'s style). And as it turns out, the rest of their catalogue is more or less just as good - I chose "Break Your Social System" due to the incandescent ease of the chorus and the way the different vocal parts just sorta idly lap up against each other, but really, these guys haven't put out a bad track yet, and those are strong words considering that a full two-fifths of their released recorded material consists of instrumentals. I can see an album's worth of songs as good as "Social System" holding me utterly in its thrall for a good long while - although I guess the trick is to come up with an album's worth of songs which are all that good. I sure hope Pacific! manages to pull it off; after this single, their future efforts can certainly count on my attention. (Click here to buy the "Break Your Social System" 7" from Rough Trade, or visit the band's MySpace for iTunes links)